Amazon releases source code for Kindle Fire's version of Android

It's been forked -- modified and altered so much by Amazon's engineers that it is almost unrecognizable from any version of Android that has come before it.

The reason Amazon was able to pull this off is that Google releases the mobile operating system's source code for all to see and even customize.

And now, Amazon is taking the same approach by releasing the source code of its customized version of Android (more specifically Android Gingerbread). Amazon had released the source code of previous Kindle e-reader software as well.